My thoughts about politics

It’s election time in Sweden in a few months and all the different parties are starting to campaign to get voters. One on the things that are available almost everywhere online right now is different political quizzes where you answer a bunch of question and end up being a right wing or left wing sympathizer. I’m pretty uninterested in the whole political thing, I guess I’ll have to read up on a lot of stuff before I make my own choice, but these quizzes (I’ve taken a few of them) started to make me think.

A lot of people are so set in their ways that they know from birth which party they’ll vote for. For them it’s a matter of tradition, what their parents voted for and what class in society they belong to. But do they really know what they are voting for? What if on election day, instead of choosing a party to vote for, you’d take a quiz with a lot of different questions, and what you ended up being in that quiz would be your vote?! Even more exciting if you didn’t get to know until after the election what you actually voted for (or maybe not get to know at all?)! Not only would people vote for their true beliefs rather than what the campaigns told them or what their habits were, but the personal issue of who’s the leader for this or that party would also be totally insignificant.

This way you could also see which questions would be the most important to the people. Hmm, I think I’ll have to take some more of those quizzes.

tata folks

Sofia Talvik’s Xmas Calendar: #13

If I were to show an American pictures from the Swedish Lucia celebration, they would probably think it was some kind of KKK meeting. But here in the cold, dark north celebrating Lucia is celebrating light in the darkness and used to be on the same day as the winter solstice, but now it’s set to December 13th every year.

Various things are tradition on Lucia, like baking saffron buns. So I teamed up with renowned jazz singer Anna Christoffersson and started baking!

Don’t miss out on Anna Christoffersson’s Christmas concerts at Glenn Millers Café December 17 and 18th.

Get the recipe for the buns here!

Première for the Xmas calendar!

Today it’s December 1st and the first window of my Christmas Calendar.

An Christmas Calendar or Advent calendar is a special calendar which is used to count or celebrate the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. Today, most advent calendars are made for children. In Europe you can find the cardboard ones in stores and usually see a them as a television show for children, starting on the first of December, and ending on Christmas Eve.

Sofia Talvik’s Advent Calendar however, is not made for children but for music lovers. Through December you’ll be able to watch 24 episodes where I celebrate Christmas in different ways up till Christmas eve.

I also have the tradition of giving away a free Christmas single each year and this year I’m releasing the single “Snowy White River” in collaboration with Music Teachers Without Borders and Gehrmans Publishing. Gehrmans Publishing is issuing a sheet music for “Snowy White River” and all proceeds will go to Music Teachers Without Borders, who works through and with music to give a meaningful life for children living in an otherwise tough environment.

So not only will you be able to learn how to play a Sofia Talvik song, but you’ll also do something good for children who need it. Gehrman’s publishing will also have a Christmas Calendar, to check it out on www.gehrmans.se where you also can download the sheet music for “Snowy White River”.

You can download the single here: www.sofiatalvik.com/snowy and check out me and my cello player perform it live in my livingroom.

Stay tuned for the next episode!

You can also follow this calendar in Swedish on blogg.aftonbladet.se/sofiatalvik